Working for crumbs
Billy Joel sings in Uptown Girl about "living in her white bread world".
Which got me thinking about bread.
Back in the very olden days, a person's stature was symbolized by the kind of bread they ate. Bread was there for every meal in some form. The ale that was the sustaining drink back in the days of prehistory was made from fermented grain...the same grain that was pounded into powder to make rudimentary bread. Of course, this bread was more cracker like and rough and had little real taste. Sometimes this hard bread was used as a plate or trencher so that the cooked meat and juices drained into the bread which was sometimes eaten at table or given to the servants or animals as food.
This was back in prehistory and later into the times when there were the rich and the poor...several centuries to be sure.
And, funny thing, the coarsely ground wheat or barley or rye grain made crude, rough bread. If the grain was ground for long times and gradually got lighter in texture and color, the bread made from this lighter flour was given to the rich or upper classes. The peasants who didn't have lots of time to grind grain or even purchase it, made their bread of the darker, less refined flour.
Time passes. Grinding grain became less arduous. The oxen probably appreciated this. Machines found their way into mills, the flour produced became less pricey and the more common people could occasionally afford lighter bread. It took a long time before Wonder Bread or Silvercup reached the typical home.
Foreigners liked the dark grainy bread of their homelands. They enjoyed rye and barley bread, or baguettes and stuck with bakers from their homelands. They did NOT favor white bread because it represented those who could and/or did oppress them.
So, when Billy Joel sings about his love for the uptown girl, he considers himself a poor working guy in love with a rich bitch.
She lives in her White Bread world, one that he himself, as a modern day peasant, doesn't have.
Once, I was given the opportunity to speak to a lawyer in a divorce case. One of my friends was getting rid of her husband and I told the lawyer that the only reason the guy married her was because she was white bread and he was the son of immigrants.
The lawyer claimed not to know what I meant by white bread. So I had to explain to him the social difference and how having a wife who was upper class could help the husband attract better clients to his profession.
The lawyer was bullshitting when he said he needed me to explain, but I did. He ran right back to his client and told him what I had said.
Ran into the divorced husband months later and he brought up my observation...he still didn't get the meaning, but it was there. Sometimes nonwhitebread folks don't like the distinction.
Despite my last name, I grew up not very white bread at all, except for the fact that Wonder Bread helped build strong bodies Twelve Ways and my mother wanted us to have the best bread.
The best bread money could buy.
So we did.
